1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field content display in a pervasive device and more particularly to establishing a content layout in a pervasive device.
2. Description of the Related Art
The conventional graphical user interface (GUI) has been widely used for many years. The primary function of the GUI includes providing user interface controls with which the end-user can interact with an underlying application, and presenting content and decorative features provided by the underlying application. For most fixed computing devices, including personal computers, there is little practical limit of the amount of content which can be displayed within the GUI for an application. As such, the selection of content layout for content in a GUI is not of paramount importance—at least from the perspective of display space. The same is not true of other computing devices.
More particularly, when content is displayed in a GUI in some computing devices, often one must compromise between the amount of information which can be displayed within the GUI display, and the amount of displayable space within the GUI display in which a preferred amount of information can be presented. Where the display area must be reduced due to height and width constraints, information that otherwise might be easily grouped and viewed in within a larger display space often cannot be presented as a single, cohesive set of interrelated interface elements. This circumstance has been known to arise in the use of pervasive devices, including handheld computers and portable cellular telephones.
“Pervasive computing” refers to any non-constrained computing device not physically tethered to a data communications network. Thus, pervasive computing devices refer not only to computers wirelessly linked to networks, but also to handheld computing devices, wearable systems, embedded computing systems and the like. Importantly, pervasive device. In the case of pervasive devices, the display area sometimes can be limited to as little as a 160 pixel by 160 pixel region or less.
New technologies address the constraints of pervasive device displays in a number of ways. Most notably, many applications intended for deployment in a pervasive device provide for the static arrangement of content sections in a content layout to maximize the readability of the GUI for a pervasive application. Yet, the display constraints of different pervasive devices can vary as much as the devices themselves. Specifically, some displays in pervasive devices are square and some rectangular with optional portrait and landscape viewing modes. Accordingly, a statically defined content layout for one pervasive device may not suit another.
To accommodate all of the different viewing modes provided by the displays of different pervasive devices, the content layout for a GUI of a pervasive application must be modified at the code level for optimization for any particular display in a pervasive device. Alternatively, the pervasive device itself can permit the end user to manually select a display mode for an application in terms of column views or desktop views irrespective of the desired content layout of the pervasive application. In the latter circumstance, however, an optimal use of display space in the pervasive device can be sacrificed at the expense of a dynamic selection of display mode. Furthermore, the content layout specified for the GUI of the pervasive application must conform to the selected display mode, often producing an awkward GUI in the display.